294 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY 



tive, dependent, contingent, and so possibly (or, rather, 

 probably) transient. 



This easily appears. If the brain, as in the third 

 supposition, is an inexplicable self-existence, then, as 

 transmitter upon which our individual existence is 

 made to depend, it must in ceasing to exist deprive 

 the eternal Mind or minds of the conditio sine qua 

 non of our being, must thus display itself as in its very 

 destruction victorious over intelligence, and no hope 

 of our continuance remains. And even if the brain 

 is, according to the first or the second supposition, 

 the creation of the eternal Mind or the eternal intelli- 

 gences not ourselves, and still is the means of our 

 being, then our only hope would lie in the chance 

 that God or the superior intelligences may have the 

 power and the good will to create the brain anew, or 

 to replace it by some better medium. But this hope 

 seems quenched at once in our inability to conceive 

 of an idejitity continuing when the continuity of the 

 conditioning medium has been broken. Or if for 

 argument's sake we waive this difficulty, who can 

 assure us that the creative power is equal to renewal, 

 since its creation has once perished ^ On the other 

 hand, confidence in the good will of our eternal 

 Source or sources has nothing to go upon but the 

 limited allotment of good that the life actually expe- 

 rienced has afforded ; and this, as all serious minds 

 too sadly know, is little enough, when we consider 



